


tonight we are victorious

by OhMaven



Series: we don't look the same anymore [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Cassian is the sloppy drunk for once, Consent, Drinking, F/M, Flirting, Jyn is kind-of a tease, Slow Burn, celebration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 01:22:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11544498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OhMaven/pseuds/OhMaven
Summary: "Fifty words for murder, and I'm every one of them. My touch is black, and poisonous, and nothing like my punch - drunk, kiss I know you need it, do you feel it? Drink the water, drink the wine." - Victorious





	tonight we are victorious

Tomorrow, it would be back to business. The Empire had been dealt a rather staggering blow, but Base One was compromised - the Alliance would have to relocate, and quickly. But, that was  _ tomorrow _ . For tonight, there was only revelry, the first  _ true _ victory the Alliance had been able to celebrate like this.

Jyn Erso did not feel as celebratory. She’d never been one for wild parties; speculations about her ability to hold her liquor or her many stories about brawls in bars notwithstanding. They were loud, and other than being useful to her, Jyn couldn’t find much about so many strangers being so inebriated so close to her enjoyable. She kept to a corner of the din, back pressed against the wall, foot braced against the pocked rock of the moon’s ruins; her arms crossed loosely over her stomach.  


Saw’s partisans had partied like this, on a few occasions. They were both somber and raucous, occasions of grief as much as celebration and, like everything else her foster father had touched in his twilight years, an undercurrent of manic energy had marked everything about them. Jyn had never participated much in those, either.  _ Belonging _ and  _ joining _ were not things the young woman had ever been accused of, after all.

There were so  _ few _ familiar faces in the crowd. The Princess; Jyn recognized her from a lifetime of standing in the shadows of powerful men. They’d stood on opposite sides of the table even as little girls - one being groomed as fodder for the dream; the other being raised to serve as its paragon. Leia had nodded to Jyn in passing, but years and experience and grief settled between them in a gulf neither woman had time to bridge just now. Baze had excused himself some time ago to look after Chirrut, who was still immersed in bacta. Jyn had briefly seen Bodhi, before a crowd of giddy pilots had swept the man up in their camaraderie; she thought it would be good for him.  


With her friends all occupied, however, Jyn felt something like the curmudgeon; a feeling which was only heightened when Cassian Andor broke through the crowd to approach her. They had crossed paths several times that night already; long enough for Cassian to admit that the team hadn’t wanted him to do something with the potential to be strenuous. Jyn hadn’t the heart to send him back to bed. There had been so precious little in his life  _ to _ celebrate, but she had worried from a distance as his stance had become first more pained, and then gradually (with the aid of alcohol,) more loose. She was willing to bet that the spy hadn’t done a lot of testing his limits with alcohol. After all, a drunk spy is usually a  _ dead _ one, and you didn’t make captain overnight, not even in a rebellion (or a department) with such a high turnover.

As he neared her now, Jyn could tell he was a little  _ too _ drunk. She raised an eyebrow, and tried hard not to wince when Cassian’s shoulder collided with the wall. Her own bacta immersion had repaired the torn and strained muscle left behind by Scarif, but Cassian’s body had been through so much more.  


“Are you not having fun, Jyn?” The drinking, the slurred words, had thickened that Festian accent of his. Another day, another  _ life _ , she probably would have found it terribly endearing. As it was, his breath reeked of the homebrew someone had broken out awhile ago. “You did it. Your father’s weapon - his  _ work _ , I mean. You destroyed it, like he wanted.”   
  
The words lodged in Jyn’s chest. Cassian was  _ right _ , she had done what she’d wanted, and what Galen had asked of her. More than that, she had saved Saw’s dream. Both of her fathers would be proud of her tonight, and perhaps more than anything it was why she hadn’t celebrated. Jyn wasn’t sure that either man’s praise was exactly something worth being proud of, and she wasn’t entirely sure either that with the dead of Jedha - of Alderaan - of all her work with reckless partisans on her hands that she deserved this celebration. Jyn had been late, had forgotten how to care, and although she didn’t know what she would have done differently, she  _ did _ know the ghosts of too many dead were going to be appearing in her dreams. This party was for the Princess, and her heroes.    
  
People who did more than grasp at falling pieces; people who were  _ victorious _ more than they were  _ tired. _

“I know,” she finally answered Cassian, pushing the corners of her lips up enough to convince someone there was a tired smile somewhere on her face. “I just think someone needs to be able to load our ship without a hangover tomorrow. You and Bodhi...you enjoy yourselves enough for me, too.”  


Drunk he might have been, but the Intelligence officer’s eyes still didn’t miss much. “You’re  _ not _ happy, are you?”  


Jyn wasn’t convinced that he was happy, either, but she didn’t want to be a buzzkill. So she shrugged. Cassian lurched forward slightly, hand catching her jaw more than framing it. It was unfair for anyone to be able to look so intense when they could barely keep themselves upright, but alcohol didn’t seem to be a barrier to Cassian’s ability to look at her like  _ that _ .   
  
“No,” he said softly, dropping his hand to her shoulder. “You’re not.”   
  
His mood was shifting; Jyn may not have ever experienced this  _ particular _ man drunk, but when she’d been quite small she had navigated the whims of Saw’s partisans sober or otherwise. She stood on tiptoe now,  bumping her forehead gently into Cassian’s. “Come on, Captain. Lets get you tucked into your bunk, okay? We can talk about why I’m not happy as we go.” 

She meant it about as much as she meant she’d love to shove her head up her own ass, but Cassian seemed to accept her words at face value. Jyn turned, tucking herself between the man and the wall so that she could slip under his arm and support his balance - and weight, if need be.  


“So why  _ aren’t _ you happy?” Cassian asked, turning his head so that his mouth moved against her hair. He seemed to slip between jovial, flirtatious, and morose with alacrity. How much of it was remotely sincere, Jyn couldn’t say. He was difficult to read, even now. Perhaps moreso now; surely Draven trained his agents against the affects of alcohol or drugs.   
  
“I don’t like parties,” Jyn huffed, steering them into one of the massive ziggurats. “Too loud, too busy, too many people.”   
  
“Oh.”   
  
The spy fell silent then, for which Jyn was grateful. She suspected that a more sober Cassian might’ve dug deeper into the question, or perhaps her answer would have given away more than she intended. Either way, in this regard the drunk variation was easier to deal with. There were few mishaps, and no further conversation, It did take her longer than she liked to hack the code on Cassian’s keypad, but she got the door open and wedged him carefully inside.   
  
Cassian turned in the doorway, hands braced on either frame, and leaned out towards her - his forehead grazing hers slightly. “You should stay.”

There was no pretending she didn’t know what he meant. Jyn had experienced something like this feeling once before, when she’d been much younger - less jaded, and brutal, and bitter. It hadn’t held a candle to the undercurrent between herself and Cassian.   
  
“Oh, Cassian.” Jyn sighed slightly; she wanted to - very much, in fact - but tonight was wrong for so many reasons. Too many ghosts were riding her; she suspected that they were also riding  _ Cassian _ . “Ask me again when you’re sober, okay?”   
  
“Will it make a difference?” He’d gone still at her mild rejection; although he seemed neither surprised nor upset.    
  
She rather thought he sounded  _ resigned _ . How did she explain to a drunk man that she wanted to know he meant it for certain? That she wanted him to remember she was there when he fell asleep and when he woke up with her still in the circle of his arms? It wasn’t like there was much in the way of even small pleasures in the life of a rebel, but that one certainly didn’t feel as if she was asking too much. Before Jyn could answer, however, Cassian went on.   
  
“You don’t know what I’ve done, Jyn.” His voice broke slightly on the word before her name, ending the sentence with a pained sigh. “I know you probably think you do, but...I am not a good man. I’ve done terrible things-”   
  
Jyn lifted her hand, cutting him off with a light finger against his lips. “We’ve both done pretty awful things, Cassian. Just because I didn’t intend to pull a trigger doesn’t make my hands any more clean.”   
  
Her fingers drifted along the heavy scruff of his sharp jaw. “I just want to make sure that when we get to that place...it feels more like a victory than a defeat. You know? I don’t want you to do this to try making me happy.”   
  
Cassian leaned away slightly, swaying in the doorway. She couldn’t resist the small smirk as her hand moved to his chest, lightly pushing him over the threshold into his room. “Besides, I’m not sure you’re good for much tonight, Captain.”   
  
He sputtered a wordless protest as the door closed between them. Jyn turned away, heading back towards the dormitory that housed herself and several others from the Pathfinder team. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy celebrations - or victories - Jyn supposed. She just liked finding them in different places.

**Author's Note:**

> To be honest, this was supposed to switch to Cassian's POV. But at some point I decided that Cassian hits a bad combo of the painkillers he's still on and the alcohol he's been drinking and turns into a silly, but adorable, drunk. It's...not the most in-character I've ever written Cassian, but thank god for that painkiller-and-booze combo to hide behind. lol


End file.
